The Secret Agent A Simple Tale n/e (Oxford World's Classics) - Softcover

Conrad, Joseph

Softcover

ISBN 10: 019953635X ISBN 13: 9780199536351

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 2008

Synopsis

'An impenetrable mystery seems destined to hang for ever over this act of madness or despair.'

Mr Verloc, the secret agent, keeps a shop in London's Soho where he lives with his wife Winnie, her infirm mother, and her idiot brother, Stevie. When Verloc is reluctantly involved in an anarchist plot to blow up the Greenwich Observatory things go disastrously wrong, and what appears to be 'A Simple Tale' proves to involve politicians, policemen, foreign diplomats and London's fashionable society in the darkest and most surprising interrelations.

Based on the text which Conrad's first English readers enjoyed, this new edition includes a critical introduction which describes Conrad's great London novel as the realization of a 'monstrous town', a place of idiocy, madness, criminality, and butchery.

ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

About this title

Review:

"Perenially fascinating... When Joseph Conrad wrote The Secret Agent he was responding imaginatively to a real botched bomb attack on Greenwich, at a time when there was real panic about anarchist extremism throughout Europe" (Guardian)

"An astonishing book" (Ford Madox Ford)

"This damp, dark thriller dances about on satirical feet, from its opening paragraph to the very last, where it suddenly plunges like Chernobyl's core to our own apocalyptic times, seamed with petit-bourgeois envy and crazed fundamentalist dreams. Whether attacking the former or the latter, Conrad never lets go of his grim, twitchy smile." (Adam Thorpe Guardian)

"One of the two unquestionable classics of the first order that [Conrad] added to the English novel" (F.R. Leavis)

Book Description:

'Spookily topical' - Guardian

About this edition

• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 019953635X
• ISBN 13: 9780199536351
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 245
• Editor: Lyon John